And from many

genuine rhetorician must be a true and just man. sources we know how Plato abhorred the "lie in the soul." But here the ground is simple expediency. The art of persuasion is the art of winning the mind by resemblances. The speaker goes by degrees from that which is accepted to that which he wishes accepted, proceeding from one resemblance to another. If the difference between two resemblances is small, there is an excellent opportunity for making the audience believe that one is the other.

This rule that "the mind of the speaker should know the truth of what he is going to say" and not "catch at appearances," may seem to be a commonplace. But it is not mere faithfulness to fact that Plato has in mind; it is that Truth which only philosophers know. All others dwell in a darkened cave.1 The moving figures they behold are not realities; they are shadows, phantoms. Only the philosopher has ascended into the clear light of day. Only he has beheld Ideas in their Absolute form. Only he it is who is able to see “unity and plurality in nature." Hence the exclamation of Socrates:

Come out, children of my soul, and convince Phædrus, who is the father of similar beauties, that he will never be able to speak about anything unless he be trained in philosophy."

These Platonic conceptions are not new to Phædrus, and no time is wasted in explaining them. Having secured acceptance of the first rule of good speaking, Socrates proceeds to lay down two corollaries. First, rhetoric has greater power in discussions where men disagree and are most likely to be deceived. The rhetorician ought therefore to have in mind a clear distinction between debatable and nondebatable subjects. Secondly, particulars must be carefully observed, so that they may be properly classified. In other words, careful definitions must be drawn, and mere matters of opinion separated from matters of scientific knowledge.

A lack of any definition of the subject of love is the first criticism of the speech of Lysias. This is particularly reprehensible as love is used in two different senses. Socrates, however, was careful in both speeches to start from a definition of the love he was treating. Again, there is no principle of order in the speech of Lysias. He is accused of beginning at the end, and his topics follow one another in a random fashion.

I cannot help fancying that he wrote off freely just what came into his head. . . . Every discourse ought to be a living creature, having its own body and head and feet; there ought to be a middle, beginning, and end, which are in a manner agreeable to one another and to the whole.1

From this study of the speeches on love, two fundamental principles of composition emerge:

First, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea; the speaker defines his several notions in order that he may make his meaning clear. . . . Secondly, there is the faculty of division according to the natural ideas or members, not breaking any part as a bad carver might.'

But these processes of generalization and division, which the speech of the famous rhetorician failed to employ, are principles that Socrates has hitherto held to belong to dialectic, and not to rhetoric.

I am a great lover of these processes of division and generalization; they help me to speak and think. And if I find any man who is able to see unity and plurality in nature, him I follow, and walk in his steps as if he were a god. And those who have this art, I have hitherto been in the habit of calling dialecticians."

Phædrus acknowledges that these principles rightly belong to the dialecticians, but persists in inquiring about the principles of rhetoric; he mentions a number of prominent rhetoricians together with some characteristic elements of their systems. Socrates admits that in addition to the really fundamental principles of composition to be found in dialectic, there may be in rhetoric some "niceties of the art." Theodorus, Evenus, Tisias, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Polus, Protagoras, and the other rhetoricians spend much time upon proems, statements of fact, witnesses, proofs, probabilities, confirmations, superconfirmations, refutations, diplasiology, gnomology, and other technicalities. These theories and practices of the rhetoricians, however, are not really principles of the art of rhetoric. They are mere preliminaries, as the tuning of strings is preliminary to playing upon an instrument. But no one would call the tuning of strings the art of music. The contemporary rhetoricians have no more real claim to be practitioners of the art than a man who knows a few drugs, but does not know how to use them, could claim to be a physician. 1Phædrus, 264.

Phædrus, 265.
Phædrus, 266.

Since all these teachings of the rhetoricians are not true principles of the art, and are altogether useless except when used in conjunction with the principles of dialectic, Socrates proceeds to give what might be called an outline of a true art of rhetoric.

Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls-they are of so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man. He will then proceed to divide speeches into their several different classes. Such and such persons, he will say, are affected by this or that kind of speech in this or that way, and he will tell you why; he must have a theoretical notion of them first, and then he must see them in action, and be able to follow them with all his senses about him, or he will never get beyond the precepts of his masters. But when he is able to say what persons are persuaded by what arguments and recognize the individual about whom he used to theorize as actually present to himself, This is he and this is the sort of man who ought to have that argument applied to him in order to convince him of this; when he has attained the knowledge of all this, and knows also when he should speak and when he should abstain from speaking, when he should make use of pithy sayings, pathetic appeals, aggravated effects, and all the other figures of speech, when, I say, he knows the times and seasons of all these things, then, and not until then, is he perfect and a consummate master of his art.1

Such an outline of rhetoric, Socrates feels, may be discouraging to the young Phædrus. The road to the mastery of such an art is obviously long and hard. The sophists, on the other hand, are represented by Plato as offering promises to impart culture quickly and easily. Here, then, is an opportunity for Socrates to compare the true way of mastering the art of rhetoric with the sophistic short cut. The rhetoricians succeed in imparting a certain skill in making plausible speeches because they content themselves with creating an appearance of probability. They teach that "in speaking the orator should run after probability and say good-by to truth." The teaching of Tisias on the topic of probability, which enabled a man quickly to make a case either for the defense or the prosecution, regardless of the evidence, is cited as typical of the rhetoricians. To show the superiority of the true rhetoric over such trickery, Socrates repeats his former statement:

1 Phædrus, 271.

ง

For a later, satirical development of this idea, see Lucian, "The Rhetorician's Vade Mecum," Works of Lucian, tr. H. W. and F. G. Fowler, Oxford, 1905, III.

Phædrus, 273.

Probability is engendered in the minds of the many by the likeness of the truth, and he who knows the truth will always know best how to discover the resemblance of the truth.1

The rhetoric of Tisias, then, is deficient in two respects. First, it is not even effective, for it is not quick at perceiving likenesses of truth; and secondly, such a rhetorician is as likely to deceive himself as his audience. Further, the true rhetorician masters his art after much labor:

Not for the sake of speaking and acting before men, but in order that he may be able to say what is acceptable to God and in all things to act acceptably to Him so far as in him lies."

Rhetoric, then, like all the arts, is to be an instrument of righteousness. After stating that enough has been said of the true and false art of rhetoric, Socrates feels that something remains to be said of the propriety and impropriety of writing. He proceeds to speak of writing, but only to condemn the practice. Concerning the inven'Phædrus, 273.

2 Phædrus, 273.

3

Scholars have commented variously and at length on this attitude of Plato toward the art of writing. Schleiermacher (Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato, tr. William Dobson, London, 1836, p. 67) argues from this attitude that the Phedrus was written in Plato's early youth. Such contempt for writing, he thinks, is inconceivable in a man who has already written very much. Lutoslawski (Origin and Growth of Plato's Logic, London, 1897, ch. 6) insists that Plato did not despise writing in general, but only bad writing, and the cult of mere literary erudition which substitutes opinion for knowledge, and leads men to put all their attention on the form, making it impossible to have a clear view of general ideas. Lutoslawski has an ingenious explanation of the passages which at the close of so wonderful a piece of writing seem to condemn writing. In Plato's time, and in his own opinion, oral teaching stood very much higher than written handbooks. Plato was very proud of his own eloquence. The purpose of these passages, therefore, is to raise the reader's expectation to the highest pitch by announcing that this beautiful sample of written eloquence is nothing compared with his oral teaching.

A different view is taken by S. H. Butcher in an essay entitled "The Written and Spoken Word" (Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, London, 1893). He cites the Phædrus in asserting that the Greek dislike for writing was general. In proof of this thesis he offers arguments which may be summarized as follows: (1) The Greeks gave a very cold reception to the discovery of letters; for centuries they employed it, not as a vehicle of thought, but almost wholly for memorial purposes, such as registering treaties and commercial contracts, preserving the names of Olympic victors, and fixing boundaries. (2) They shrank from formulæ; unvarying rules petrified action. To reduce laws to writing was to kill the spirit and exalt the letter. (3) Writing was inartistic, as the letters conveyed no images. (4) The Greeks had a high conception of the dignity of knowledge. True knowledge is not among the marketable wares, that can be carried about in a portable shape in

tion of letters he cites a myth in which the prophecy is made that the art of writing will create forgetfulness and a pretense of wisdom. Contrasted with this futility of writing is "an intelligent writing which is graven in the soul of him who has learned, and can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent." This expression of opinion about writing concludes Plato's theory of rhetoric as found in the Phædrus.

That these suggestions of Plato for the organization of rhetoric into a scientific body of knowledge may be more clearly in mind when we come to contrast the Phædrus with Aristotle's Rhetoric, we shall here summarize them.

1. "The first rule of good speaking is that the mind of the speaker should know the truth of what he is going to say." This cannot be interpreted as an injunction to speak the truth at all times. It is rather to know the truth in order (a) to be persuasive by presenting to the audience something which at least resembles truth, and (b) to avoid being oneself deceived by probabilities. In order to know the truth, the rhetorician must be a philosopher.

2. The rhetorician must define his terms, and see clearly what subjects are debatable and what are not. He must also be able to classify particulars under a general head, or to break up universals into particulars. The rhetorician, then, must be a logician.

3. Principles of order and arrangement must be introduced. “Every discourse ought to be a living creature, having its own body and head and feet; there ought to be a middle, beginning, and end, which are in a manner agreeable to one another and to the whole."

4. The nature of the soul must be shown, and after having "arranged men and speeches, and their modes and affections in different classes, and fitted them into one another, he will point out the connection between them-he will show why one is naturally persuaded by a particular form of argument, and another not." In other words, the rhetorician must be a psychologist.

5. The rhetorician must "speak of the instruments by which the soul acts or is affected in any way." Here we have the division under which comes practically all of rhetoric when viewed more narrowly and technically. The "instruments" by which rhetoric affects the soul are style and delivery. Plato believed style to be acquired, however, as Pericles acquired it, by "much discussion and lofty contemplation of nature."

6. The art of writing will not be highly regarded; nor will continuous and uninterrupted discourse be regarded as equal to cross-examination as a books, and emptied from them into the mind of the learner. True knowledge is a hard-won possession, personable and inalienable. "Much learning does not teach wisdom," was a saying of Heraclitus, and even Aristotle declared that "much learning produces confusion."

For a further account of Plato's aversion to writing see Grote's Plato, I, 358. Phædrus, 276.